‘Top secret’ is the new ‘secret’

In the sprawling national intelligence community where nearly 5 million Americans have security clearances, more and more information is being classified, creating an even more massive secrecy bureaucracy.

Experts say the tendency to err on the side of classification is watering down the definition of “secret,” leading to more people needing security clearances to do even non-sensitive government jobs and meaning that true secrets could potentially be accessed by more people.

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Enter Edward Snowden: The former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor who used his security clearance to access and leak details of a controversial National Security Agency phone and Internet tracking programs. Though leaks like these are the exception, experts say Snowden showed the weaknesses of a ballooning national security structure that has no incentive to shrink.

“There is a sense of felt urgency to protect secrets. There’s no particular urgency to declassify or disclose them. As a result, there’s a tendency toward bloat,” said Steven Aftergood, who runs the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. “There’s a kind of inflationary principle at work, where classification markings can diminish in value.”

Classifying more documents means more security clearances are handed out, compounding the problem, said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program at New York University’s School of Law.

“There’s no denying it, the numbers speak for themselves. Five million people — that’s one in every 50 American adults — have clearance,” Goitein said. “It’s very pervasive. Over-classification results in over-clearance, essentially: Too many people needing clearance for jobs that are relatively low-level and non-sensitive in nature.”

Government and contract employees know the stories well: An FBI mail-worker who needs clearance just to hand out correspondence, promises by potential employers that getting a secret clearance for a job-seeker won’t take more than a few weeks — and sponsorship for higher clearance levels handed out as job perks for those who may not actually need them on a day-to-day basis.

“It is absolutely the case that over-classification leads to the delegitimizing of our legitimate secrets,” said Angela Canterbury, director of public policy for the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight. “This leads to a proliferation of security clearances, because so much of the information is classified.”

There are two types of possible errors when making a decision whether a document should be classified: “false alarms,” or classifying something that shouldn’t have been classified, or “missed targets,” not classifying a piece of information that someone later believes should have been classified.

“From a personal perspective, the cost of not classifying something that someone else later believes should have been classified — whether that person’s right or wrong — is very high,” said Martin Hellman, a cryptologist and Stanford University professor. “The general rule is: If in doubt, classify it.”

President Barack Obama came into office pledging to increase government transparency, and some progress has been made. In December 2009, he signed an executive order, calling for a review of the classification process.

And a congressionally established Public Interest Declassification Board submitted recommendations to him last December.

Those recommendations, including the creation of a senior-level White House-led steering committee to develop an implementation strategy for reforms, are being reviewed by the White House, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told POLITICO Thursday.

The Snowden leak won’t necessarily change anything for the in-progress review, she suggested.

“Options for the creation of a senior level group are currently being considered,” Hayden said. “Our review will take into account a number of factors on the complex topic of classification, not just recent current events.”

In May, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), an outspoken critic of over-classification, urged the White House to establish a steering committee to start the reform process.

“Our current classification system is outdated and needs to be reformed. … We’re currently classifying too much information at the expense of transparency and taxpayer dollars,” she said.